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Saturday, June 18, 2011

embarrassing

This week a small group of people have profoundly embarrassed some of us here in Vancouver. They have behaved unthinkingly, in a sort of mob mentality, with their small-town ways and their hysteria fanned by the local media. They cheer on violence and gurn for the cameras. And before that, there was a riot.

Let us be clear: the riot was a pretty pointless affray, a needless and eminently avoidable commotion that deserves no celebration.

The riot was not started by anarchists--though it's impressive that anarchism is still, apparently, in the twenty-first century the political scapegoat of choice, and that this should be the first stereotype to which the city mayor turned. It was not political, except in the most indirect of ways. As my colleague Gastón Gordillo puts it, "the nihilism that fueled the riots is that of a popular culture that places victory in sports above anything else, in an expensive and corporatized city that does not offer its youth other sources of collective passions and identifications." Larry Gambone argues that the riot was the expression of anomie on the part of the Canadian banlieus, disaffected young people who "have no future and somehow know that. Future means working in Walmart. Future means never being able to afford a dwelling in the Vancouver area even if they scored a half-way decent job." But this seems to be contradicted by the news that (for instance) one of the most high profile pictures, of a young kid trying to set light to a police car's gas tank, is in fact of a star athlete, son of a surgeon, headed to university on a scholarship.

No, the rioters were simply Vancouverites. As far as I could see, they were a fairly representative cross-section of people, men and women, of all races, all social classes, and a range of ages. They were psyched up by the occasion, much hyped by the media, and some of them had been drinking for hours. Most importantly, at least by the time that the trouble spread to the Bay department store (focal point of the riot and now of the subsequent memorialization), the police had abandoned the streets and gone into full riot mode at blockades set up on the periphery. In the space carved out by this upping of the ante, things accelerated as people found that they could do what they wanted without any immediate repercussions. They were soon acting out fantasies engrained in popular culture and modeled by millionaire sportsmen on the ice. For some, it must have felt like a carnivalesque moment in which anything was possible: an intoxicating notion, especially for the intoxicated. The media, city council, and police had together constructed a temporary state of exception--that, indeed, is what "reading the riot act" is all about. Criminalized in advance, with the cops lobbing tear gas at them from some blocks away, plenty of young people (though still by far the minority of the crowd) took advantage of the situation to break windows, set fires, turn over a few cars, and loot a couple of downtown Vancouver's larger chain stores.

The main troublemakers--or the people who most egregiously filled the vacuum left by the forces of law and order--will no doubt be charged and prosecuted, and rightly so. I have no interest in defending the rioters. But it's worth looking at what they did, before all traces of the violence are swiftly swept away. It's significant that almost all the crime was against property, rather than against people (apparently the majority of the personal injuries were caused by the police tear gas and pepper spray). Also that the damage was remarkably localized and selective: the Bay was a magnet for looting probably not only because it is an establishment icon (the former Hudson's Bay Company once had quasi-state powers under the British Empire, much as the East India Company did in the Orient), but also more banally because its ground floor show-rooms have easily-portable items of high value: perfumes, bags. This wasn't a riot in which people were carting off consumer electronics or food. It wasn’t a riot of professionals or of the poor. Again: it was an opportunistic riot of ordinary Vancouverites.

But, with the exception of a few dissenting voices (here's one; here's another; and one more), almost all the post-riot response has aimed at denying this perhaps unsettling fact. And so the embarrassment begins.

The dominant post-riot response in the media and on the Internet has been that of a self-righteous lynch mob. And they have the cheek to call themselves the "real" Vancouver.

This "real" Vancouver cheers on violence. There have been those who have used the event as an excuse to call for state repression: "How about a total media blackout and we let the police REALLY do what should be done?" I have heard plenty arguing that the riot shows that Canadian society has become too liberal, too tolerant. This is no doubt music to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper's ears. The headline on the front page of the Vancouver Province was "Let's Make Them Pay," encouraging the online vigilantes who have set up Facebook groups and and websites to post images of alleged rioters in a sort of dystopian social media society of surveillance. Big Brother meets the Wild West meets Mark Zuckerberg. Nobody talks of civil liberties or little principles such as the presumption of innocence. And this is from people who claim to uphold the rule of law. Their unthinking hypocrisy is breath-taking.

For hypocrisy is the order of the day among the up-standing citizens who are so keen to express their dismay, moral outrage, and embarrassment at the so-called thugs, idiots, morons, hooligans (choose your own pejorative) who supposedly conjured up the violence out of their back-pockets with a couple of cigarette lighters and (it's rumoured) balaclavas.

This "real" Vancouver carves the city up into an "us" versus a "them." The double standards are everywhere evident on the boarded-up windows of the Bay that have become an impromptu shrine to civic pride and social scapegoating. The same photos that circulate online are plastered up with the slogans "We Are All Canucks... Except this Prick." Or "We Are All Canucks... Except this Jerk." Graffiti claiming "We Love Vancouver" and "We are One Family" is unironically scrawled next to declarations that the rioters should "Get Out of Town and Stay There." The city is to be made whole again by banishing its undesirables and denying that they ever had anything to do with an "us" that is pure and virtuous thanks only to this kneejerk demonization.

This "real" Vancouver pits downtown against the suburbs, "real" fans against supposed anarchists, heroes against hooligans, and actively undoes the social solidarity previously promoted through the ubiquitous propaganda that "We Are All Canucks." Frankly, though I've been following the team, I've never felt much like a Canuck; I'm not paid anything like their stratospheric salaries, for a start. The slogan was always an artificial imposition (already, Graham Lyons persuasively argues, a "mob mentality") that tried to deny any social differences, all the better to sell us a uniform of over-priced jerseys. But those differences have been re-asserted, quite literally with a vengeance. We now have Canucks and anti-Canucks, Vancouverites and anti-Vancouverites, angels and devils in a devastatingly simplistic (and violent) division between good and bad. And the "good," the "real" Vancouverites who set to work to clean up the post-riot debris pose for the cameras in a mirror image of those gurning in front of burning cars they so quickly replaced.

There's nothing particularly wrong with civic volunteerism, of course. Let's just hope that this is not simply a spectacular frenzy that is repeated only every seventeen years. Let's just hope that these same people move on to volunteer in the Downtown Eastside, the neighbourhood that is Canada's poorest postcode, located just a few blocks from the site of this week's disturbances. Sadly, I doubt it. Street-cleaning, moreover, is normally the preserve of municipal crews--who were indeed already on the streets and already in action before the night of rioting was even out, long before any of the much-ballyhooed good citizens showed up. Those people deserve our gratitude, too, as much if not more than these once-a-decade volunteers; more so if anything, as they have to clear the debris after every drunken Saturday night in the Granville Entertainment district. But nobody seems to mention them. Again, it is no doubt music to Harper's ears, as he strips our public services, to hear the fantasy that trumpets volunteerism instead of properly funded social programs as the cure to civic ills.

This "real" Vancouver depends upon fantasy: the fantasy that cheering for a professional sports team is some kind of noble cause rather than, as my colleague Alec Dawson sadly notes, complicity in "an endeavor devoted to turning public goods into private wealth." But above all the notion of a "real" Vancouver builds on the fantasy that violent exclusion will somehow make this a "world-class" city. One of the most ridiculous, if sadly not atypical, articles published this week was written by Matthew Good (I kid you not, that's his name) for the Guardian: his shame, he tells us, is provoked by the question of "what [. . .] the national media is going to be saying? Or, for that matter, foreign media?" But as the article's commenters repeatedly point out, there's no better instance of provincialism than this small-town worry about image, this all-too Canadian concern that people should like us. "World-class" cities prove their status mostly by not worrying about whether or not they are perceived to be world class. And for good or ill, it would be hard to name a major world city (Paris, London, Buenos Aires, Mexico City) that does not have its history of riots and social disturbances. Real cities, unlike this fantasy of a "real" Vancouver, have social tensions, divisions, disagreements, off-days and on-days, that sometimes erupt in violence, sometimes not. It's the dream of purity, of niceness untroubled by difficulty and difference, that reveals continued provincialism. We saw this already with the Olympics, and the effort to present an image of the city that erased its homelessness and drug problems in favor of the literally incredible myth of "Super Natural British Columbia."

All this should be obvious enough. A moment's reflection would reveal that the riots tell us something about the city, a city that is rather more real than the so-called "real" Vancouver. The post-riot discourse also tells us something, of course. As UBC student Miriam Sabzevari eloquently observes, it tells us that there is a significant minority who "have a need to feel morally superior to others—and when an opportunity comes to bask in our superiority, we actually become quite relentless in it."

These are people who really should know better. They are the ones who embarrass me.

35 comments:

paul budra
said...

Jon: A great essay. I have one bone to pick: you say that the majority of the injuries were caused by the police. Where is this from? The articles I have read, which have included interviews with the doctors who treated the wounded, said exactly the opposite: the wounded were there because they hurt themselves doing stupid drunk things. Baton wounds etc, the injuries associated with police violence, were almost non-existent. But maybe I've missed some reporting.

Paul, thanks. I've seen it said in multiple places that the majority of people were treated as a result of the tear gassing. Of course, this may not be counted as "injuries." A very quick google brings up this:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4c7_1308324565

Which does indeed bracket out the tear-gas injuries:

"<span>Grafstein, who worked in the ER during the 1994 Stanley Cup riot, said he saw few injuries caused by police, other than gas-sprayed eyes. "I didn't see as many police-inflicted injuries such as baton strikes, dog bites as we did back in 1994," said Grafstein."</span>

This accords with my experience, too. I saw hardly any confrontation with the police. Even the one police charge I saw was pretty half-hearted, met no resistance, and was soon withdrawn.

I can believe that the majority of injuries were mostly drunken self-harm. Meanwhile, though other friends had different experiences, myself I didn't see any violence against the person in the couple of hours that I was downtown--with the one exception that two guys raced out of the crowd at great speed, one clearly chasing the other. I had no idea what that was about, or how it ended.

I have a problem with this article, as I did with your Tyee article. You have shifted the blame to everyone but the participants (including the onlookers as yourself ). In the Tyee article you focused on the police actions during the incident, and here you focus on the public response after the incident (and the nice thing about the internet is there's always a nutcase that will post something you'll find exquisitely perfect to make your point - thought you had to reuse quotes from the Tyee article so I guess the pool wasn't that deep). You should know better than to use words 'dominant' and 'majority' without backing it up ( "The dominant post-riot response in the media and on the Internet has been that of a self-righteous lynch mob" - I cound't agree less that this was the dominant response). Yes, people are visibly upset at the riot, and everyone is expressing their indignation differently (some of them quite stupidly). You, on the other hand, first demonized the police, and has now moved on to demonizing the population that din't participate in the riots (your 'so-called "real" Vancouver'). You're not helping at all. Maybe you should start with a mea culpa and acknowledge that everyone one that just hung around downtown (taking pics and feeding the frenzy so the braver/stupider ones mustered the courage to go beyond being an onlooker) only made the situation much worse (and thus became part of the problem). If people had just disassembled, I'm 100% certain that this would not have happened, as the 'brave' ones would not have the cover of the masses in which to do their deed. And no, it didn't build up slowly so people had no clue what was about to happen, as you've insisted. Pretending to be that naive is also not helping. Everyone downtown knew full well what was unfolding.I have a friend that went to the game and I asked him what he saw after he came out of the game. He said he left before the end of the game because he didn't want to see the cup being handed, and as he was walking to take the skytrain, he saw a plume of smoke on Granville. His (sensible) reaction was to get himself out of downtown quickly and take the skytrain on commercial instead.

Where are these 'multiple places' that you've seen the majority being police caused? As paul budra, I have only seen references to brawls, stab wounds, as being the main source of injuries. The article you posted says 'many were due to hooliganism', a 'troubling number due to good samaritanism'. Nothing about majority police caused, not even tear gas related. References please ?

<span>I am reading Jon's post (which I agree with it) and responses to his post here and I am still wondering about the VPD role in handling this situation. They knew this was going to happen and their plan to face it was wrong. You can have 100.000 people in the street, with the history of the 1994's riot and handling the situation the way they did it. They literally built a free rioting zone. In the 1994 the riots were strongly influenced by the police actions, in the 2011 they were by the police misactions. I am thinking that this could have been a blackmail of the VPD to the politicians. They NOW would have more money, more toys to play, and more power than before. If not, if it wasn't a blackmail there should be some politicians and police big heads under investigation. On the rioting people role, I disagree with Elbilug, they were there the majority just hunging around watching as you said the 'brave' ones burning, destroying and stealing property and there was no way that because the police with their megaphones would say "please, go home, disassembled, go home" that mass would go home. They and us are curious the problem was not how to disassemble them, it was how in the f-*** hell the police allowed them to assemble in that way? How they allowed them to roam free? They were trying to contain something they should have not let be assembled in that way... </span>

<span><span>I am reading Jon's post (which I agree with it) and responses to his post here and I am still wondering about the VPD role in handling this situation. They knew this was going to happen and their plan to face it was wrong. You can't have 100.000 people in the street, with the history of the 1994's riot and handling the situation the way they did it. They literally built a free rioting zone. In the 1994 the riots were strongly influenced by the police actions, in the 2011 they were by the police misactions. I am thinking that this could have been a blackmail of the VPD to the politicians. They NOW would have more money, more toys to play, and more power than before. If not, if it wasn't a blackmail there should be some politicians and police big heads under investigation. On the rioting people role, I disagree with Elbilug, they were there the majority just hunging around watching as you said the 'brave' ones burning, destroying and stealing property and there was no way that because the police with their megaphones would say "please, go home, disassembled, go home" that mass would go home. They and us are curious the problem was not how to disassemble them, it was how in the f-*** hell the police allowed them to assemble in that way? How they allowed them to roam free? They were trying to contain something they should have not let be assembled in that way... </span></span>

'As UBC student Miriam Sabzevari <span>eloquently observes</span>, it tells us that there is a significant minority who "have a need to feel morally superior to others—and when an opportunity comes to bask in our superiority, we actually become quite relentless in it."'

'These are people who really should know better. They are the ones who embarrass me.'Indeed...

Hello (again) elbillug. As I say to Paul, I read this in a couple of places. Here's one: http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/ottawa/story/2011/06/15/bc-stanley-cup-fans-post-game-7.html. This says "Officials say dozens of people were injured, but most were being treated for tear gas or pepper spray exposure." Meanwhile, I saw elsewhere the statement that the number of emergency admissions was three times that of a normal night in Vancouver. I wonder if that was a normal Wednesday or a normal Saturday. If the former, then, again, really it's surprising how little violence agains the person there was.

Hi. Yes, this article is about the response to the rioting. That's its focus. Along the way, however, I do try to allocate due responsibility to the participants. As I say, "I have no interest in defending the rioters." That's not my point. Though nor am I interested in demonizing them; I try to explain why I have a problem with that attitude.

I re-used one quotation. There are plenty of other instances, not least on the various "naming and shaming" websites, which have some very scary advocates of vigilanteeism. I just happen to know that that one comes from someone who is otherwise a very upstanding and respectable (even admirable) member of the community. Not a nutcase at all.

It's true that I don't provide a statistical analysis of the (now) hundreds of articles, blog posts, Facebook status updates, Tweets, and so on, to back up my sense that "<span>The dominant post-riot response ... has been that of a self-righteous lynch mob." But that's been my strong feeling, and I provide examples, from the Province front page to the graffiti on the boarded up windows of the Bay. I could point to plenty more. Your feeling is different. So be it.</span>

Finally, I disagree that I personally was part of the problem. But we will probably have to agree to disagree on that, too.

"St. Paul’s set up a station to deal with more than 100 people suffering from injuries caused by pepper spray and tear gas." http://truthquake.com/2011/06/16/vancouver-riot-100000-people-rages-stanley-cup-loss-video/

"A spokesperson for St. Paul's Hospital said the emergency room had seen at least 57 people with injuries related to the riot, most of whom were treated for tear gas exposure and released" http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/ottawa/story/2011/06/15/bc-stanley-cup-fans-post-game-7.html

(Actually this is the same story as above, thouh the link there doesn't seem to work.)

And there are other such sources, I'm sure, as I know I saw this in various places. Not that it's a particularly major point.

" Let's just hope that these same people move on to volunteer in the Downtown Eastside, the neighbourhood that is Canada's poorest postcode, located just a few blocks from the site of this week's disturbances. Sadly, I doubt it."

A friend who works in the DTES reports that on the night of the riot "<span>the DTES was the safest place to be."</span>

Another friend who has worked in the DTES for nearly twenty years is ambivalent to say the least about the many well-meaning people who want to volunteer down there (especially on holidays like Christmas). They represent a challenge to train and manage and often end up causing more trouble than good. She suggests that people volunteer in their own communities, or perhaps work with the latch-key kids in Kitsilano and Kerrisdale (neighborhoods which, as you suggest, were well-represented in the riot).

Thanks for the link to what is indeed an interesting read. I have a couple of disagreements:

* I don't think that the rioters were predominantly working-class youth. As I say, i really think it was a cross-section of the community.

* I didn't see any overtly political elements; I didn't hear anyone chant "Fuck the Police." Actually, there wasn't much chanting at all (a major difference from most political demonstrations); the slogan I heard most was "Bruins Suck."

* But this is not to say that the riot was not (as Gastón Gordillo and others indicate) indirectly political. Though what isn't, so long as you make the necessary connections?

I agree with you that fleeting volunteer commitments do more harm than good but as someone who trains and works with volunteers regularly and also works in and with co-workers who work in the DTES I do agree that managing and training volunteers is a lot of work. That said, I do not think my programs could operate without my volunteers and for that I think if more people made a long term commitment to whichever type of volunteer work they were most passionate about it (people, animals, environment, health etc) it would be a more meaningful and important contribution than cleaning up the streets as a photo op and that is how I understood that message. Volunteerism itself is really valuable but does not work as a one time feel-good act.

hmmm. And you all know that the people who showed up to clean up downtown are not regular volunteers how exactly? "let's condemn everyone who is passing judgement on the 'would-be rioters' (author's words), and while we're at it, let's pass judgement on the ones that felt the need to do something positive in reaction to it!" Real classy. I was not downtown during the riots, I was not downtown the next day. I do find it appaling that some people such as the author take more exception to people's response to the crime, than to the crime itself. I've seen him write an article condemning the police, and one article condeming the general non-rioting population (and very broad strokes were used on both). Too bad there were no articles condeming the rioters...

<span>You honestly have no idea who Matthew Good is? Really? I assumed because you work at UBC and you write articles about the people of Vancouver, you actually lived here. Well, that's a little embarrasing.</span>

<span><span>You honestly have no idea who Matthew Good is? Really? I assumed because you work at UBC and you write articles about the people of Vancouver, you actually lived here. Well, that's a little embarrassing.</span></span>

Professor, what is your position on amatuer bloggers who post poorly researched, duplicitous commentaries accusing others of being sef-righteous? Is it ethical for citizen journalists to <span></span> demonize other private citizens by making unsubstantiated claims accusing them of being members of a dangerous lynch mob without any due process? Are those accused of being dangerous not entitled to the right of presumed innocence? Just curious.

Professor, what is your position on amatuer bloggers who post poorly researched, duplicitous commentaries accusing others of being sef-righteous? Is it ethical for citizen journalists to <span></span> demonize other private citizens by making unsubstantiated claims accusing them of being members of a dangerous lynch mob without any due process? Are those accused of being dangerous not entitled to the right of presumed innocence? Just curious.

<span>Professor, what is your position on amatuer bloggers who post poorly researched, duplicitous commentaries accusing others of being sef-righteous? Is it ethical for citizen journalists to <span></span> demonize other private citizens by making unsubstantiated claims accusing them of being members of a dangerous lynch mob without any due process? Are those accused of being dangerous not entitled to the right of presumed innocence? Just curious.</span>

Norman, thanks for the question. I think my critique is rather different from the scapegoating and demonization to which I refer. I answered a rather similar query over on the Tyee as follows:

"I get your point. But there is a difference: I'm not saying that the people who cheered on the violence, scapegoated a minority, and so on, should in turn be ostracized and run out of town. They were unthinking and got caught up in the (online) mob, but most of them are surely fine people. Real people, anyhow, not bogeymen and women like the "anarchists." Some of them are my friends.

"We need to talk to them, work with them, get beyond the fantasy that suggests that we always have to agree. Real communities, real cities, always have to deal with differences and disagreements, as well as moments of madness. These people may embarrass me today, but they are Vancouverites too."

I see your point. You are suggesting that the majority of the online mob is just like the majority of the rioters; merely confused children not yet aware of the danger of lighting gasoline fueled police vehicals on fire or smashing large plate glass windows with groups of people standing by. Yes, I understand. We should sit down and talk to the "self-righteous lynch mob" and tell them they are just misguided. Maybe, they are not quite old enough to understand the concepts of "civil liberties" or "presumption of innocence". It's just a playful bit of youthful fun because they are not really destroying other humans. An like the rioters, they're not posing any real danger.

<span>I see your point. You are suggesting that the majority of the online mob is just like the majority of the rioters; merely confused children not yet aware of the danger of lighting gasoline fueled police vehicals on fire or smashing large plate glass windows with groups of people standing by. Yes, I understand. We should sit down and talk to the "self-righteous lynch mob" and tell them they are just misguided. Maybe, they are not quite old enough to understand the concepts of "civil liberties" or "presumption of innocence". It's just a playful bit of youthful fun because they are not actually harming other humans. Therefore, like the rioters, they are not posing any real danger.</span>

More simply still: the point is not to banish them, and pretend that they are somehow not part of the community. For good or ill, they are. This is regardless of how much "danger" we feel they may be posing. And it's not a question of the condescension that you seem to feel.

"Posthegemony is a book of major theoretical importance and profound political and disciplinary implications. . . . Beasley-Murray’s book will be a main point of departure for our most important debates for many years to come." --Charles Hatfield